Tag: Doctor Who episode

Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning, and I wrote mini-reviews; having just finished the series, this is a little summary and analysis.

The scores I used go thus:

This is embarrassing. Go away.

Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.

Average for a Doctor Who episode.

That was a good one!

One of the best ever.

I assigned the scores as I watched on a completely subjective basis; at no point until tonight did I check my math to look for trends. But now it’s time; did some seasons rank much better than others for me? I recall Series 1, 3, and 6 most fondly. Did the scores reflect this? And when I assigned my scores, did I indeed grade on the normal curve, or did I bias high or low? Let’s find out.

First, some simple statistics:

Mean

3.15

Median

3

Minimum

1

Maximum

5

Std. Dev.

0.80

This is not too bad; it means I assigned a mean score of 3.15 ± 0.80, pretty close to the target average of 3. Yay me. In fact, it means that I slightly over-scored, but not too wildly.

Putting it on a chart, it looks like my favourite eras were the year of the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston), the second half of the Tenth Doctor’s career (David Tennant), and the first half of the Eleventh Doctor’s tenure (Matt Smith.)

Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning, and I’m writing mini-reviews; I post them one season at a time. The info is cribbed from Wikipedia, and I added my scores and comments.

The scores go thus:

This is embarrassing. Go away.

Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.

Average for a Doctor Who episode.

That was a good one!

One of the best ever.

This one is for Part 2 of “Series 7″ of the recent collection, released in 2013 and starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor and Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara “Oswin” Oswald under the direction of Steven Moffat, and it completes the re-watch marathon. I have to hope and pray that Stephen Moffat, clearly exhausted by his long tenure (or brain-drained by some alien worm, whatever) will now step away and let someone else try to salvage the series.

Phooey, we lost Sir Ian as the voice of the Great Intelligence. In addition, what a missed opportunity to give agency to a Companion! Clara could very well have been gifted with computers on her own, which would have been the most logical reason for The Stack to want her – as was even mentioned in the episode. But no, she was clueless until partial upload left her with magically 1337 skilz.

Eh, a mess of a plot to get us to the big jump, but it had Vastra, Jenny, Strax, and River Song. The latter seriously needs to learn to say “Fuck off, you selfish dickhead husband,” though. Also, it didn’t look in previous episodes like Clara’s been saving the Doctor all the time.

1 episode

Steven Moffat

Saul Metzstein

18 May 2013

240

4

It was nice to see a number of characters (and actors) appears, and the rhythm was fairly brisk. I always enjoy non-linear story-telling, although this was still cautious. Mostly, I regret that the plot revolved around the last few years of Doctor Who, less than a decade in the five spanned. Also, the previous Companions are ignored except, to an extent, Rose Tyler.

Good Lord, I thought this episode would never end. I really can’t stand hearing any more innuendo about the Doctor’s romantic life. And a 300-year war siege by the Daleks? Really? No one figured out how to break the stalemate?

Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning, and I’m writing mini-reviews; I post them one season at a time. The info is cribbed from Wikipedia, and I added my scores and comments.

The scores go thus:

This is embarrassing. Go away.

Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.

Average for a Doctor Who episode.

That was a good one!

One of the best ever.

This one is for Part 1 of “Series 7″ of the recent collection, released in 2012 and starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, Karen Gillan as Amy Pond, and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams under the direction of Steven Moffat. I’ll review the second half of the series, released in 2013, as a separate post because it figures a different cast and metaplot anyway.

This is the season that achieves something I thought mathematically impossible: all of it is below average. But at least it gave me the chance to discover what, in fact, the power of 3 is: it’s the score they couldn’t reach with this writing and directing team.

Ugh. The only virtue of this episode was… No wait, it merely sucked. Even Jenna Coleman couldn’t help it. And the only reason Oswyn’s status may be a big reveal to the viewer is if that viewer has been distracted for the last 45 minutes, yelling: “But that’s not how the Daleks work!”

The only reasons this rises to a 2 is (A) sterling, if completely underused, guest cast, and (B) the dinosaurs did look nice. How could such a cast produce such a bland episode? Oh, I see: Chris Chibnall wrote it.

In this episode, the Weeping Angels have officially changed from scary to petulant, the Doctor is written as a self-centred adolescent who doesn’t deserve any of his friends, and River needs to get some self-esteem back rather than put up with this shit.

Was this written by asking 30 undergrads to write two minutes each? While the mystery of Clara Oswin Oswald mildly intrigues me and I was happy to see Madame Vastra, Jenny Flint, and Strax (and hear Ian McKellen), this contained some of the worst dialogue I’d heard on Doctor Who. The Doctor, in particular, gets awful, awful lines and poor Matt Smith seems at a loss for what to do with them.

Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning, and I’m writing mini-reviews; I post them one season at a time. The info is cribbed from Wikipedia, and I added my scores and comments.

The scores go thus:

This is embarrassing. Go away.

Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.

Average for a Doctor Who episode.

That was a good one!

One of the best ever.

This one is for “Series 6″ of the recent collection, released in 2011 and starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, Karen Gillan as Amy Pond, and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams under the direction of Steven Moffat. The distinguishing feature of the series is the use on long, inter-connected story arcs rather than simple episodic format. Even the more standalone episodes contained foreshadowing or cross-references to longer plots.

Good idea with nice twist that was enough to let me gloss over the “mining for acid in a medieval monastery in the North Sea” concept to go along and think about disposable replicants. But lost serious points in the last few minutes of the second part when, after all the speeches, the Amy replicant is just summarily destroyed. Nice going, Doc.

First half or two-thirds earn a 4 or 4.5 for the brisk rhythm, dialogue, and plot twists as well as the gratuitous but entertaining cameos. The last part is a weak 3 for excessive predictability and characters being stupid in order to obey the plot.

Oh dear god, that is so awful. It feels like it was given to Nigel the intern to write, six months after the rest of the season, to tie up loose ends. I loved River Song until then, but I profoundly hated the character in this episode – not for being a psychopath but for being—So—Fucking-Annoying. Also, death speech of the week, blah, blah, blah. With a title like that, it’s like you announced “Chasing the White Rabbit” but played “We Built This City on Rock’n’Roll.”

It could have been an excellent episode but somehow never quite came together, probably because the fear-fate-Minotaur connection never made sense. The Monster in the Maze idea was married at shotgun point to the idea of losing faith in the Doctor.

An other episode that should have been better. Having Craig and Stormageddon—er, Alfred have adventures with the Doctor was a great idea, but the Cybermen was not. The Cybermen defeated by love was… just a bad idea. Really? These other people didn’t have families?

Probably too sweet and charming, but I enjoyed it—especially the three miners Droxil, Ven-Garr, and Billis. The Arwell family was also pretty well cast and acted. It was odd that the trees were so expendable, though.

Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning, and I’m writing mini-reviews; I post them one season at a time. The info is cribbed from Wikipedia, and I added my scores and comments.

The scores go thus:

This is embarrassing. Go away.

Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.

Average for a Doctor Who episode.

That was a good one!

One of the best ever.

This one is for “Series 5″ of the recent collection, released in 2010 and starring Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor, Karen Gillan as Amy Pond, and Arthur Darvill as Rory Williams under the direction of Steven Moffat.

While Russell T. Davies’ speciality was having other characters tell us how wonderful the Doctor is, Moffat’s is the death speech. There are many more final sacrifices than characters… The series begins well but flags mid-season with a number of good ideas poorly executed, before Moffat brings it home with a strong finish.

A little too long, and Matt Smith is clearly feeling his way around the role, but at least the characters of Amy and Rory sink their roots. Prisoner Zero is just not that scary, though. Also, we finally reach the point where I can’t stand the new version of the musical theme, and it will keep on getting worse.

Ah, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and false dichotomies. It would have been a pretty good episode if a few minutes had been cut; all the epiloguing was longish. Yes, we did get the analogy Amy was quite clearly making between the Star Whale and the Doctor, no need to explain it further.

Oof. That was badly written, and I was underwhelm with both Matt Smith and Ian McNeice’s acting as the Doctor and Sir Winston Churchill respectively. Karen Gillan did a good job as Amy Pond, salvaging what she could of a crappy, crappy plot. Only the quality of the special effects set it apart from some of the worst Star Trek episodes from my youth.

Nice sets, plus I like the military clerics and I’m almost always happy to see River Song. But by over-explaining and over-exposing, this two-parter kills everything that made the Weeping Angels terrifying in “Blink.” The whole “Amy must walk around with her eyes closed” thing was too long.

I’m glad to see Rory join as regular cast and I love Lucian Msamati, although he has a very limited part as Guido. Once again, the episode was too long; the always seem to stretch the suspenseful part until I get right into “Bored, now.”

I kind of like the Silurians. I also really enjoyed Dr. Nasreen Chaudhri. However, killing off Rory at this point felt sloppy, and bringing him back later in “The Pandorica Opens” would feel even sloppier, like Moffat couldn’t make up his mind about where the plot was going.

“The Pandorica Opens” gets a 5 for the pre-credit sequence, a 4 for the basic idea, a 2.5 for the nonsensical plot details, and another 4 for River Song, averaging to 4. “The Big Bang” gets a 4 for the first half in the museum, and a 3 for the interminable epilogue, death speech, and artificial happy ending, averaging to 3.5

This Christmas special was the best to date by a long shot. Good rhythm, good use of time travel to create a non-linear plot, good visuals, Katherine Jenkins’ beautiful voice, and Michael Gambon as the Scrooge-like character. It didn’t even waste any time in repetitions. Sadly, though, no monuments were destroyed in London.

Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning, and I’m writing mini-reviews; I post them one season at a time. The info is cribbed from Wikipedia, and I added my scores and comments.

The scores go thus:

This is embarrassing. Go away.

Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.

Average for a Doctor Who episode.

That was a good one!

One of the best ever.

This one is for “Series 4″ of the recent collection, released in 2008-9 and starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Catherine Tate as Donna Noble.

I wasn’t keen on seeing Donna Noble again, but she was better written this episode, with more agency. I liked that she was conducting her independent investigation. The Adipose plot didn’t make much sense but the rhythm and storytelling were good. Also, ack! the theme music gets less good every season. As I recall, I started actually hating it with next season’s version.

Not a very sterling plot but I liked that Catherine Tate showed some good acting, infusing dignity and depth into a character who will be all too often written as shallow comic relief. The visuals were good, especially in Pompeii proper. However, new writer James Moran did a terrible job on the cosmic-level dialogue, though he was fine on the day-to-day, street level talk.

I like the Ood and the juxtaposition of foreboding and compassion they bring. For the third episode in a row, Catherine Tate does a good job of being, well, Noble and the voice of conscience. I may have to reconsider Donna as a character, darn it.

I liked seeing Martha Jones again and the dynamic that developed between her and Donna. Alas, mid-way through the first episode until nearly the end of the second, Martha became a damsel in distress/football, while Donna started snivelling inexplicably after being so much tougher earlier. Also, dead tired of hearing the Companions tell us all how wonderful Doctor Mary Sue is.

How I wanted to like this one! I like Fenella Woolgar as Agatha Christie, and I love big set-piece mysteries, but the Vespiform plot? With the medallion? The inexplicable guilt trip for Christie, who had nothing to do with what happened? and the wince-worthy wasp special effects? No.

The setting is a gigantic library, that’s hard for me to resist; and the biolink ghosts echoing provide good atmosphere. I’m also a fan of River Song, except in a few of later episodes in Season 6. Unfortunately, we now see Donna’s character dumbed down, the way I remembered it before the re-watch. Lower score for the second half because the resolution is a bit dumb.

As with “The Weeping Angels” or “Silence in the Library”, the best terrors are unseen. The first part is very nice because for once it shows us what is great about the Doctor instead of telling us, as he gets everyone to talk and laugh and he shows genuine interest. Unfortunately, the resolution takes a little too long, we get past suspense-building and into, ahem, repetition. The episode would be great if it could be edited down by 5 or 10 minutes.

Good concept but uneven execution. The side glance at events from the three previous seasons was a nice, but there are three things I’m really tired of: Companions having crushes on the Doctor, every character telling us how great the Doctor is, and every Companion telling us how ordinary and unimportant they are. By now, the writers should allow Donna more self-confidence and less screeching in denial.

Oy. It was really nice to see all the guest characters—even the ones who were woefully underused—but that was one and a half episodes’ worth of plot spread over two-and-half episodes’ worth of reel time. Plus the Replacement Doctor plot for Rose is tacky, and the final, complete denial of agency for Donna is abominable. Donna has already made the big choice three times at this point—once in the primary timeline in “Partners in Crime”, once in an alternate timeline in “Turn Left”, and right here at the end of this episode, not to mention every time she embraced that choice all over again by travelling with the Doctor instead of returning home. Yet after she has explicitly made her choice, the Doctor takes it from her, regardless of what she wants, because he prefers it that way.

Really good pre-credit intro, and a great performance by David Morissey as, well, the Doctor. I was disappointed that his character was (as usual) stripped of agency when he realized his connection with the Doctor. Dervla Kirwan showed lovely poise as Mercy Hartigan.

Let me get this straight: you get a woman with organization and leadership skills, a man with mechanical knowledge, another with an understanding of physics, a bona fide psychic, plus three others whose talents we didn’t bother checking, but the Doctor does everything. Heck, you’d think that the passengers would have gotten that bus back on schedule on their own, but no…

Nice sets, nice atmosphere, good performances especially from Lindsay Duncan as Captain Brooke until the characters turn into water zombies, but weak scenario. Brooke? Is that an allusion to River and Pond plots? She’s a fixed point in time and nicely tied into previous episodes. The detail work in script-writing is far superior to the actual plotting.

John Simm as the Master (yay!) and Bernards Cribbins as Wilfred Noble are the best things about this two-parter. Seriously, Russell Davies just has to have every character tell us, over and over, how cool the Doctor is.

Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning, and I’m writing mini-reviews; I post them one season at a time. The info is cribbed from Wikipedia, and I added my scores and comments.

The scores go thus:

This is embarrassing. Go away.

Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.

Average for a Doctor Who episode.

That was a good one!

One of the best ever.

This one is for “Series 3″ of the recent collection, released in 2007 and starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones. Strong and capable, Martha is my favourite Companion in since Sarah Jane Smith even though the writers gave her a stupid crush on the Doctor; I’m sorry she was there for only one season.

The second half is, in my opinion, the highest point in the Tenth Doctor’s career with multi-episode story arcs that are themselves joined by an overarching plot. We see better acting, plotting, editing, and directing than at any point in the Tenth Doctor’s previous appearances.

I can’t figure out why this was expanded into a two-parter. There wasn’t enough plot for it, and it’s one of those “time travel” episode that is so far from historical accuracy, they’re not even trying.

Tolerable episode. You see the plot coming and going, and the way in which the Bad Guy is defeated makes as much sense as usual, but there is momentum and a few nice minutes of acting. David Tennant is finally starting to own the role.

Yay, another futuristic episode, again with a very Alien feel to it. Unfortunately, it’s also awfully similar to “The Impossible Planet”/”The Satan Pit”. I’m also uncomfortable about the fact that the Big Bad turns men into serial killers and women into victims while this gender disparity goes unacknowledged.

With the second half of the series, we finally get into high gear. I forgive the plot and rhythm flaws in this pair of episodes because of (A) the effort at an actually somber and resonably credible visit of the past, (B) some nice story-telling tricks to throw the viewer off balance, (C ) some acting that injects actual drama and pathos.

My favourite episode ever. The non-linear story-telling structure, the sparse use of the Doctor and his all-knowingness, the suspense, the editing, the scary new villains, it’s just great. So few episodes actually use the device of time travel as a means for creative story-telling.

A great story arc that finally has a lot of foreshadowing paying off, making the series connect together and flow in a way that Series 2 did not. Derek Jacobi delivers a superb performance as Professor Yana and we see the loss of a good man. John Simms is wonderful as the Master, I can’t get enough of him. I got a bit tired the whole “The Doctor is so great” praise, he’s such a Mary Sue. Martha clearly did kick-ass stuff off-screen, and I could well see a game I’d call “The Year That Wasn’t,” where we would follow her adventures.

Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning, and I’m writing mini-reviews; I post them one season at a time. The info is cribbed from Wikipedia, and I added my scores and comments.

The scores go thus:

This is embarrassing. Go away.

Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.

Average for a Doctor Who episode.

That was a good one!

One of the best ever.

This one is for “Series 2″ of the recent collection, released in 2006 and starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about it; I don’t think the chemistry between Billie Piper (playing Rose Tyler) and Tennant was as good as the one she had with Christopher Eccleston, the Ninth Doctor. Same with Noel Clarke (playing Rose’s ex-boyfriend Mickey), his exchanges with Eccleston had more flair.

Best part was Ricky (alternate Mickey) as leader of the Street Preachers. Shaun Dingwall is still nice as Pete Tyler. Other than that, oh-hum plot, gratuitous explosions, and Rose was completely useless.

The 1950s technology and aesthetics are cute, and the nostalgia must be fun for the UK. The Wire (the villain) was woefully underused, however. The episode started well with Rose doing some independent investigation, but fizzled out and returned to the boilerplate Time Lord technology to fix everything.

First appearance of the Ood; first decidedly futuristic episode since the visit to Satellite 5 at the end of the previous season. Good visuals, and good Aliens-like atmosphere. The Big Bad is a let-down, however, and the interminable pit plot in the second episode seriously hampers the tempo.

Refreshing approach to telling the story, and an excellent performance by Marc Warren (a nice change from seeing him play low-lives and psychos in Life on Mars, Discworld serials, or The Good Wife…) A little off on timing, a little too long spent on epilogues to epilogues.

“Army of Ghosts” jumped a little too soon to the Cybermen but it had good atmosphere in the first part. Cute to see Freema Agyeman in a bit role before she plays Martha Jones in the next season. “Doomsday” earns a better score because in spite of a balderdash plot, it has the wonderful trash-talk scenes between Cybermen and Daleks, and it tackles the problem that Cybermen are just Dalek-minus.

Ugh. Donna Noble. A character apparently written by Miss O. Jinny. The episode is twice as well written as the previous Christmas special, so it gets a 2. It sure managed to fill a lot of running time with very little plot.

Edmund and I have been re-watching the Doctor Who reboot from the beginning. I decided to write mini-reviews of the episodes; being lazy, I just grabbed the tables from the Wikipedia list of episodes, dropped it in a spreadsheet, added columns for my scores and comments, and now I just paste them back here. How’s that for low effort? It even allows you to click back to the episode summaries on Wikipedia with absolutely no effort on my part!

I’ll post them one season at a time. This one is for “Series 1” of the recent collection, released in 2005 and starring Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. Or, as long-time aficionados might think of it, Season 27 or so. I’ll confess right now, Eccleston was my favourite of the last three actors to play the Doctor, which places me in a minority.

The scores go thus:

This is embarrassing. Go away.

Weak. I’m not going to try convincing my friends to watch the show based on this.

First appearance of Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones; best thing in the show. Nice to see Noel Clarke as Mickey again, and his chemistry with Camille Corduri as Jackie Tyler. Too bad a lot of promising support characters were killed.

Awful writing. The Doctor is absent for most of the episode, then wins through single combat; Rose’s creative effort bombs completely; and Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton), the best PM ever knew, is demoted by the Doctor for making the tough call.